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Sony Leaks Reveal Hollywood Is Trying To Break DNS

schwit1 sends this report from The Verge: Most anti-piracy tools take one of two paths: they either target the server that's sharing the files (pulling videos off YouTube or taking down sites like The Pirate Bay) or they make it harder to find (delisting offshore sites that share infringing content). But leaked documents reveal a frightening line of attack that's currently being considered by the MPAA: What if you simply erased any record that the site was there in the first place? To do that, the MPAA's lawyers would target the Domain Name System that directs traffic across the internet.

The tactic was first proposed as part of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in 2011, but three years after the law failed in Congress, the MPAA has been looking for legal justification for the practice in existing law and working with ISPs like Comcast to examine how a system might work technically. If a takedown notice could blacklist a site from every available DNS provider, the URL would be effectively erased from the internet. No one's ever tried to issue a takedown notice like that, but this latest memo suggests the MPAA is looking into it as a potentially powerful new tool in the fight against piracy.

5 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. Go ahead by cdrudge · · Score: 4, Funny

    If a takedown notice could blacklist a site from every available DNS provider, the URL would be effectively erased from the internet.

    Good strategy. Go ahead with that plan and let us know how that turns out.

  2. Screw them! by excelsior_gr · · Score: 5, Funny

    We'll make our own DNS!

    With blackjack and hookers!

  3. Re: The US Internet Shutdown Switch by pegr · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is a great idea. Let's call this file "hosts"! Now, where to put it?

  4. Odd individuals they must have been by Archtech · · Score: 5, Funny

    It seems that the bipeds who once inhabited this planet had, at one time, developed a comprehensive worldwide networking system. They accomplished much through it, from exchange of all kinds of information to commercial transactions, education, and even personal communications.

    But suddenly, one day, this useful system was destroyed. Apparently a small group of bipeds, which had enriched themselves by creating carefully distorted fictional representations of life and events, decided that the network might be slightly reducing the rate at which they amassed wealth. So they sabotaged it.

    We really have no idea what kind of intelligence those bipeds had - if it was even intelligence as we know it.

    --
    I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
  5. Re: The US Internet Shutdown Switch by xrayspx · · Score: 3, Funny

    We should probably have a whole area of disk for various flotsam and configs and yadda yadda, et cetera.